Memories of a Sensation Seeker

            by Luke Vavasour

 

It briefly crossed my mind that this was not a good idea, but hey, I was bored and it seemed fun. I walked confidently forward without breaking my stride once. I knew that the automatic doors would open up before me, so I continued forward. They didn’t show any sign of opening, but at the last second the sensor acknowledged my presence and the doors swung open, just as I knew they would. What I was about to do is called burglary. I knew when I entered Safeway I would be stealing something. If I had come up with the idea inside the store, it would have been a completely different story. That would just be petty theft.

            With my Berkeley High Crew gym bag slung around my shoulder, hanging down by my waist, I looked the very definition of innocence. Wearing a button up white shirt with jeans that fit and a pair of old worn skate shoes, I doubted I set off very many bells in the staff’s head. I particularly liked the effect of the crew gym bag. I always imagined that it made me seem much less suspicious because crew is typically looked down on in Berkeley as an ‘elitist’ sport. In my head, this made me appear as trustworthy. Seeing as I had never been caught shoplifting, my logic must have been somewhat sound.

            Dressed in what I imagined to be inconspicuous clothes, I walked confidently into the store, my shoes squeaking on the marble floor as worn shoes have a habit of doing.  I walked straight ahead as if I knew exactly where I was going. Keep walking. Just keep walking and don’t look around a lot, I thought to myself. I walked straight down the aisle, all the way to the back of the store. At the end of the candy aisle, I took a left turn and walked past the cheeses and yogurts until I arrived at the drinks aisle.

            For my purposes, it was rather lucky that there were also chips at the top of the drinks aisle. I stopped and looked at the chips, selecting which flavor I would like to munch on. I made sure to focus all my attention on the chips, as if I was selecting a flavor. When you are doing risky things like this, it is always smart to double-check everything. A quick glance down affirmed that I already had partly unzipped my crew bag. It was just zipped down enough to be able to shove a bottle into it easily, without making anything easily visible inside the bag. The last person left the drink aisle and with that, I grabbed a bag of cool ranch chips, my favorite.  I walked back down the drinks aisle towards the register and swiftly but naturally, I reached my hand out and grabbed my other favorite, a fifth of Smirnoff triple distilled vodka; 50 percent alcohol, that’s 100 proof. Just as swiftly as I grabbed the bottle, I slipped it through the unzipped section of my gym bag. The whole thing took about 2 seconds. I was that slick.

            I left the drinks aisle, without having broken my stride once except to select chips, and proceeded to the register. It is always good to buy something cheap when you steal something expensive. It is less suspicious than walking around the store and leaving without making a purchase.  (Even so, I have been known to complete this procedure a few times without even buying so much as a pack of 25 cent gum.)  Everything went smoothly. I left the store to where my friend was waiting in awe.

“Did you get it? That was too fast, you didn’t get it, did you?” My friend questioned.

“I got it. Let’s go back to your house and figure out what we’re doing tonight,” I replied as if it had been the easiest thing in the world. Joey and I hopped on our skateboards and off we went, tearing up curb all the way back to his house, making an unrelenting racket that any passerby obviously would not take kindly to. We arrived at Joey’s house. As soon as the door creaked open I ran upstairs to Joey’s room where I threw my bag and backpack.

“All right man. Max called me, we should hang out with him tonight. His parents are so chill, we could get as drunk as we want to and we can both sleep over for sure.” I said. Joey had no complaints. Getting prepared for the night, I borrowed some of Joey’s clothes because all my good clothes were at home. As I pulled on baggier pants, put on a nice hat with a color coordinated shirt and a borrowed pair of all white K Swiss shoes, I felt myself changing personas. I no longer felt like the preppy crew kid trying to go undetected by employees in Safeway. I was now ready to go out on my nighttime adventures. With my hip flask filled with vodka, and the remainder of the fifth in my backpack, we were out the door and on our skateboards before the door even slammed shut behind us.

The concrete flowed beneath us faster and faster as we gained speed. Max lived in the bottom half of a two-story house on Acton and Gilman, an area on the outskirts of North Berkeley. His parents were what can only be described as lax. When it came to curfews and drinking, they were not too concerned about Max. He had recently turned 18, and they were starting to treat him like an adult. Joey was 16 and I was 15, the youngest of the three. As we got to his house, it was just starting to get dark.  We went into his house from the back entrance, because his room was in the back of the house and we could go straight to it from the back door without encountering the parental units.

Once inside, I collapsed on his leather couch and threw my skateboard onto a pile of junk next to the couch. I was done with it for the night; the rest of my adventures would be on foot.

            “Check it out, I got a fifth of the 100 proof,” I said expecting him to be impressed.

            “Nice. I got my own stash too,” Max replied as he pulled a half full handle of vodka out of his dresser drawer where it was hidden rather badly seeing as the drawer was already half open. He had me beaten. I had a fifth, he had a handle. Fucker. Needless to say, there was plenty of alcohol to go around. I emptied my backpack of everything except my fifth and a water bottle filled up from Max’s handle, and with that we were off for our night.

“I’m heading out, be back later,” Max halfheartedly informed his parents.  They didn’t even acknowledge him.

            Our first stop for the night was Saint Mary’s high school. Max was the first over the fence at the end of his block. Once we were all safely over the fence and in the woods behind Saint Mary’s, the drinking began. We all poured very stiff drinks of vodka and cranberry juice. At the time it was the most I had ever drank. Hard alcohol, unlike beer, takes a long time to kick in, and for that reason people drink it until they feel the effects of the drink. The obvious problem with this is that if you drink steadily up until you feel it you will have drank far too much and most likely will puke your guts out. Vodka is tricky like that. Two of my friends were hospitalized that year, one of them from a fifth of vodka stolen by me, but both of them from vodka.

At Saint Mary’s we caused minor chaos; nothing too major. We merely flipped the soccer goals over and threw the field markers like javelins. They sailed through the night, landing with a satisfying thud in the ground some yards away where they stuck into the grass. We went moving right along after the last javelin was thrown.

            As we made our way from the high school to Solano Avenue, I ran along the roofs of cars. I guess this was before I discovered parties, because all I did for fun was try to cause trouble; a therapist would later tell me this was a ploy for attention.  At any rate, the cars’ hoods dented in as I jumped from one to the next and finally launched myself into the air as I reached the last car in a row. I hit the concrete so hard my ankles screamed with pain; it took quite a bit of will power to keep from letting the pain register on my face. After much climbing around on buildings along Solano, we all three of us began to feel that gnawing hunger at your stomach that drinking tends to give you. We arrived at Safeway without a cent in our pockets and left with a Mickies tall can, 2 hoagie sandwiches, and a Reeses pieces. The funniest thing about that night for me is that I learned the distinction between burglary and petty theft because of that damn hoagie. So it goes.

            I found myself in a drunken stupor at a remote elementary school munching on a hoagie and sipping on a tall can, wondering how in the hell I had so much mud on my clothes. My cell phone’s brightly lit screen revealed that it was 1:30 am; it also hurt my head the same way the sun does when you wake up with a strong hang over. I couldn’t be hung over all ready, could I? I was. The tall can picked me back up nicely. It was time for the walk home. It had been a very destructive night, and in my book that meant success. If we had stopped there and walked home, my life would have been very different. The mayhem along the walk home continued, but on a much more criminal note.

Teens call it car prowling. I had heard of kids doing it before, but I always thought it was stupid. The idea is that you walk along the street trying to open the doors to all the parked cars. I suppose people come home after a long day of work and the only thing on their mind is what is for dinner or how they will spend their evening relaxing, whatever the reason, a surprising number of people forget to lock their cars. These particular cars were our victims that night. Max was the first to try. There was no discussion or warning; he just walked up to a car, tried the door, and to all of our surprise it swung open with ease. The rest is a blur. We gained entry to many cars, but did not manage to find anything really worth stealing inside. We stole anyway. So it goes. We filled my backpack with an odd assortment of other people’s possessions which caught our interest; the highest valued object was an expensive pair of binoculars. 

            We should have stopped, but we didn’t. I was searching through a car with Max, when the night air was pierced with the sound of a blaring car alarm. Joey had fucked up. He had set off an alarm. I did not think twice, I ran as fast as was possible; followed closely by Max and Joey. My heart pounded and my legs felt like jelly. We tired out a few blocks later and stopped, convinced we had made the escape. We had found something that provided a rush that can only be compared to the shot of adrenaline I received when I found myself drunkenly caught in the searchlight mounted on the side of a police cruiser.  As soon as we began our walk on at what was hopefully an inconspicuous pace, the searchlight blinded me. I froze.

            “What are you guys doing over there?” a gruff voice from behind the light inquired.

            “Just walkin’ home man, just tryna make curfew.” Max replied in a shaky voice. A million thoughts were racing through my head. Everything in my body was telling me to run behind a house and cut through backyards. I didn’t budge.

            “Show us your hands, drop to your knees, and lie on the ground” the voice barked from behind the light. No sooner had he ordered this command, than another car pulled up from the other direction. We all hugged pavement. Any idea of running was shot. The pavement was cold and rough against my cheek. My heart was still pounding; I could feel it in my ears. Two officers approached and swiftly handcuffed my two friends. One of the officers grabbed me by my backpack and pulled me to my feet. I stumbled as I was escorted to the back of one of the cars. My backpack was left on the ground outside the door.

The strangest thing happened. Everything slowed down; I sobered up immediately. Although I knew that I was fucked, I did not care in the slightest. There was nothing to do. I sat back and hummed along to the soothing oldies music coming from the front of the car. An officer came back to me later and cuffed my hands behind my back and then returned me to the backseat. Sometime later, I was read my rights and soon after, Joey was thrown in the back of the squad car with me. Max was 18. He was going to jail. He was not riding in our car. The ride went smoothly. We joked with the cops and told them everything that had happened without holding back any information. When we arrived at the Albany police station, we were brought in through the back door.

            A camera flashed in my face, and my mug shot came up on the screen that officer Jones was so busy with. He typed in a bunch of numbers, which all had corresponding misdemeanors and felonies in the code book to which he was referring. The ink on my fingers did not wash off easily; my fingers were still stained black the next morning. We each had a turn in an interrogation room explaining exactly what had happened that night. I was wrapped in a scruffy cheap blanket as I had my turn being interrogated. You know; the kind you see in movies. The hero somehow defeats all of the bad guys and the police show up just as he finishes cleaning up shop. During the aftermath, he is always wrapped in one of those cheap blankets explaining just how he managed to do it with a cup of coffee in his hand, maybe sitting in the back of an ambulance behind all that caution tape blocking off the crime scene. The only difference: I was being interrogated. I was explaining all of my crimes, not my heroic acts, and I left no details out on record. I was returned to my holding cell where Joey was waiting.  I was charged with 3 counts of petty theft, 1 count of conspiracy, 1 count of burglary, 1 count of minor in possession of alcohol, and 1 count of possession of stolen goods. Quite a lengthy record for a kid who had not even seen his 16^th birthday yet.

            It was stupid. I was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. There was no point to our night of chaos. Surprising as it may seem, I am glad I got caught. In the long run, I was lucky. Max spent three days in jail. I spent a night in a holding cell and was released to my mother at 7 AM. This was a wake up call. I realized that I could not afford to keep doing stupid shit like that, unless I wanted to spend three sleepless nights in room with hardened criminals and drug addicts who scream in the middle of the night due to withdrawal. That was not going to be me. I was not going to fuck up again. I stopped stealing. I started going to parties and socialized with my peers. I stopped wreaking random havoc for fun. There is nothing like realizing that jail is only one car alarm away, one hoagie sandwich away, to make someone cut the bullshit and clean their act up. And that’s just what I did.